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October 20, 2017

Humanize Your Hospital by Blogging

By Dan Hinmon, MCSMN Director

Editor's Note: This essay is part of our weekly #TimeLessWisdom series, in which we're highlighting one of the contributions from our 2012 book, Bringing the Social Media Revolution to Health Care. Learn more about the series.

In Search of Excellence author and renowned business consultant Tom Peters says,

No single thing in the last fifteen years professionally has been more important to my life than blogging. It has changed my life. It has changed my perspective. It has changed my emotional outlook. And it’s the best marketing tool by an order of magnitude I have ever had.

So with all these great opportunities, why do so many hospitals hesitate to blog?

Blogging requires more thought and preparation than short Facebook posts or tweets on Twitter, and to be successful, you need to post a blog at least once a week. Posting two or three times a week is even more effective. Add blogging to a lengthy list of daily tasks, and it can easily seem overwhelming.

Here are four ways to make blogging easier for you and your organization:

Develop an editorial calendar and stick to it.

Recruit a team of bloggers: CEOs, dietitians, educators, nurses, pharmacists, cancer survivors, new moms, board members, donors, grateful patients. They're all possible blog writers, although they will probably need to be edited by an editorial services professional.